Connie

It has taken me a while to process the death of Ian's mom. I wanted to let him deal with it however he needed and for him that meant time alone to think and process. He didn't really want to talk much or have others around him, he just needed to deal. I get that. The loss of a parent is something we all know is coming, but it's hard to imagine before it actually occurs.

It's been hard for me as well, but I'm sure in much different ways. Connie and I were never really close. Sometimes it was hard for me to know how to relate to her, but there were so many things I appreciated about her. She was funny and thoughtful. She was quirky (which Ian inherited and it is one of my favorite things about him) and she loved her family. But the biggest thing that I will forever love about her and be grateful for was the gift of her son. Since having sons of my own I have thought about her often. Sometimes at night when I'm holding and rocking a crying Noah or Thomas I think about how 30 years ago Connie was doing the same thing with Ian. Without her, Ian wouldn't be who he is today. I bet she, like me, thought about who Ian would marry and whether or not she would like her or fit in with the family. I bet she, also like me, wondered if her son having a new woman in his life would take him away from her. I bet she shared a lot of feelings that I feel and I'm sure most mothers feel.

This is my favorite picture of Connie that we have:

It reminds me that we both are mothers. Also, Ian looks a lot like Thomas in this picture:) We miss her and think about her often.

Woodworking

So Ian has been really into woodworking lately. I'm not sure I even mentioned that on the blog yet! Didn't want to overlook that! Here are a couple things he's made:

He made the shelf...I did the embellishing!

He considers this cubby bench his best work yet:) I think all the plans for these can be found at ana-white.com Her site is so amazing! I'm on there a lot now looking at things I want ian to make for us. 

And here is our dining room table that he is also pretty proud of:

Notice how I'm wearing a tank top? Yeah these were taken in the summer....and we are missing summer SOOOOOO much right now. Can't wait to start our garden this summer and be out in the sun!

Oh and here is a painting Mary and I made for the kitchen:

We have a hard time remembering this, so it is a good verse to have up in our kitchen! We like the food:)

Quoteable: homeschool edition

Mary has this little notebook where I write sentences from our reading book and she has to illustrate them then rewrite the sentence. Usually I sit with her while she does this as we're working on making full sentences and leaving spaces between words, and you can see below that she clearly just rushes through the work when I don't sit and have her go slow. But today I said, "you know what to do, I'm going to go help the boys so just bring this to me when you're done..."

Me (pointing at the illustration): so Mary what's happening here? 

Mary (points at what I suspect is poop coming from the man): those are the lumps. I didn't really know what they were so I just drew that.

Me: ummmm ok so what do you think these words say?

Mary: brad has the best band of lumps!

Couldn't have done this better myself.

Free to serve: why we need a homestudy

So many things have come together in my life lately. I'm reading a book about spiritual disciplines and he talks about how we think freedom is the ability to do whatever we want, whenever we want, however we want. But the bible defines freedom much differently. If Christ hadn't died, we would not be free from sin. Freedom is something that is earned with a price. He says that spiritual disciplines are the price of godliness, in that we need the disciplines to attain godliness.

This got me thinking about taking care of orphans and families in need. Without a home study, I am not free to foster or adopt. It is a process that takes months with many hours of work to complete, but it is the path to being free to care for children. All that to say, we turned in our application this week! We got a call from our worker and she is going to stop by next week to meet us, go over paperwork and answer questions. It feels like we're really getting started now and I do have a sense of freedom about it. God says to, "Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed." (Psalm 82:3) and before this I felt like there was so little I could do. I'm mean look around you! This world is crazy and horrible things happen to weak ones every day. I'm sure there is a lot I could do, but I just didn't know what. It feels very freeing to have this command and now also see the way God wants us to obey it.

We have an elder at our church who says if you don't have a passport you are sinning, because God calls us to go to all nations and tell them about Jesus, but you can't do that without a passport! Now, he may be exaggerating a bit by calling it a sin to not have a passport, but this same ethic applies to home studies. If you don't have a home study, you can't take in a child if God should call you to do so. We want to be as free to serve Christ in whatever capacity he calls us as we can. Side note: we also turned in our applications for passports this week! And it sure is crazy expensive to be able to leave this country. But I'm glad we did it as we have a couple mission opportunities on the horizon...we shall see!